Stuff for Dads

  Avatar 3D

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Uhura from Star Trek, the conflicted Terminator from Salvation and a host of characters that even special glasses can't make three-dimensional.

Rated: 12A.

Story: 150 years in the future, a paraplegic ex-marine gets the chance to go to the planet of Pandora and try to convince the 'primitive' indigenous people to quietly move out of the way of the human mining corporation that wants to plough up their home. Instead of talking to them in person, he remotely controls a specially-grown alien body. This is supposed to help gain their trust but, unsurprisingly, just freaks them out. To compensate, he has to study their ways and customs, ride a flying lizard and learn to hug trees.

Yep, it's Dances with Wolves in space...

Comments: Hooray, I finally dragged myself out of the house and made it to the cinema to see Avatar. Was it worth getting snowed on and then having to cough up £9.10?

Erm... Sort of.

It's certainly visually spectacular with plenty of action, explosions and impossible scenery. (Floating mountains, anyone?) The plot, however, is very predictable and the characterisation is paper thin. This would be OK if the film was a frantic ninety minute adventure but it's over an hour longer than that. A message that's blatantly 'Corporations = bad, Army = bad, Indigenous people = wise and strong and wonderful' might have been a revelation once upon a time. These days, the absence of any shades of grey feels almost dishonest.

The 3D effect is very different from the limited amount I've seen previously. Toy Story often takes place on distinct 2D planes whereas Avatar has proper depth to objects. There's also no noticeable blurring in fast-moving sequences. Bizarrely, though, there's a lot of distracting fuzziness in static scenes. The makers have gone with a depth-of-field effect so that only items at a particular distance are in focus - stuff much closer or further away is blurred. This is more relaxing on the eye than having everything in focus at once and works great in the action scenes where attention is automatically drawn to the excitement. It's not so good when people are simply standing around talking - it's easy to end up glancing elsewhere and become distracted by fuzz.

Avatar has been very successful but that's probably more down to good timing than anything else. It's the first major 3D release that isn't an animation aimed primarily at children. As such, watching it results in a certain amount of wide-eyed wonder. Having said that, I'm still not sold on 3D. Seeing it in 2D would have been different but I suspect equally enjoyable.

Is it worth rushing to catch it at the cinema while it's still on in 3D? Not desperately. DVD would be fine. Despite the flaws, 3D is unlikely to go away and, in another year or two, we'll be inundated with films that exploit the technology better and also have a decent script. Save some cash for then.

Conclusion: Not a patch on Titanic.

Explosions: Loads.
Big, blue aliens: Loads.
Monsters with sharp teeth: Loads.
Convincing lines of dialogue: Not so many.
Times I jumped 'cos I thought something was going to hit me in the head: One
Times I had to hit myself in the head at the dumbness of it all: Three or four.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: action, sci-fi

 
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  G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra (DVD)

Starring: Christopher Eccleston, Darth Maul, Dennis Quaid, the green girl from Star Trek, Sienna Miller, Marlon Wayans (remember him from Dungeons & Dragons? No? Maybe for the best...) & some generic action guy (Channing Tatum).

Rated: 12.

Story: An elite unit of super soldiers must recover some 'nanomite' warheads that have been stolen by a lunatic and his army of henchmen. In an effort to stop him destroying Paris, they, er... destroy Paris.

Comments: And I thought Outlander was daft...

The plot of G.I. Joe makes very little sense. There's all kinds of nonsense involving unlikely technology and overblown conspiracies but you can't help feeling that both sides are simply too busy travelling the globe blowing things up to think about what they're doing.

Luckily, they move very fast and the explosions are enormous.

For a movie based on a range of action figures, G.I. Joe has clearly had a large amount of money thrown at it. Things almost constantly leap and drive and fly and go boom, so there's little time to worry about why on Earth they're doing it. The chase sequence through the French capital is particularly fresh and exciting.

There's a large cast of heroes and villains, each with their own specialities. Despite a fair number of flashbacks to explain motivations, however, the pace seldom flags. Although the the set-up feels quite like X-Men, there's none of the angst. Within moments, it's time to blow stuff up again.

In many ways, G.I. Joe is great. It's a non-stop rush of dumb spectacle with a high profile cast and some intriguing ideas. Sadly, it's maybe just a bit too dumb. I can put up with an awful lot if it leads to some really big fireworks but, honestly, this is the kind of film where ice sinks. Even while watching Sienna Miller and Rachel Nichols fight each other in the middle of a pyrotechnic apocalypse, I was still thinking, 'What? But why? Eh? That'd never work? And, oh goodness, please, please, will someone tell Christopher Eccleston to stop with the Scottish accent?'

Ho well, at least it's much better than the game. It's probably not as good as a whole load of action figures and accessories, though...

Conclusion: Lots of fun but liable to make you stupid.

Explosions: Loads.
Emotional realism: Lacking.
Scientific realism: Slim.
Political realism: Sparse.
Any kind of realism whatsoever: Pretty much absent.
Does that matter if it means the chance to watch beautiful people throw each other about while France blows up around them?: Possibly not.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: action, film review, sci-fi

 
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  Outlander (DVD)

Starring: James Caviezel, Sophia Myles, Jack Huston, Ron Perlman and John Hurt.

Rated: 15.

Story: An astronaut from another world crash-lands his spaceship in eighth century Scandinavia. Unfortunately, he brings a fire-breathing lizard monster with big teeth along for the ride.

He's forced to earn the trust of the local Vikings and then they all go dragon hunting...

Comments: Daft. The whole set-up of Outlander is just plain daft. If you can get past that, though, it's a passable action flick which is more fantasy than science fiction. Plenty of care and attention has been applied to the sets and costumes, and the combat is authentically swift and bloody. The 'dragon' itself gives the impression that the computer graphics guys got a little carried away but at least it's an excuse for some fire and explosions.

The cast generally seem as if they'd rather be elsewhere. Caviezel spends most of the time looking like he's just bitten into a lemon, John Hurt is John Hurt, Jack Huston weirdly gives the impression of playing Russell Brand playing a Viking (or maybe that's just me) and Perlman, for some inexplicable reason, appears to think he's in Braveheart 2. Myles' character is lumbered with every cliché going - she's the pretty (but tough and headstrong) princess who is promised to an arrogant prince but is strangely drawn to the mysterious stranger... and winds up needing saved from a dragon. Sigh.

Despite everything, however, Outlander is a likeable adventure tale. Sure it's stupid and predictable but it's also slick, full of action and looks good. You could do worse.

Conclusion: The Lord of the Rings meets Alien on a weekend break to Norway. Lots of guys with swords fight heroically, then get eaten.

If that sounds mildly entertaining, then you'll be mildly entertained...

Explosions: Occasional.
Unlikely plot developments: Several.
Spirited shield maidens: One.
Crazy guys with swords: Tasty.
Things not to do when hunting dragons: Split up and look for clues...

Rating: 3/5

Labels: fantasy, film review, sci-fi

 
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  Moon (DVD)

Starring: Sam Rockwell and the voice of Kevin Spacey.

Rated: 15.

Story: Sam Bell is coming to the end of a three year contract supervising an automated mining operation on the moon. He's had no company the whole time apart from a robot which sounds like it was designed by the same team as HAL. Even the satellite is out, so he can't have live conversations with Earth - he has to make do with pre-recorded messages from his wife who is beginning to seem apprehensive about his return.

Unsurprisingly, this isn't exactly turning him into a poster child for mental stability. With only weeks to go, he starts to suspect he's not quite as alone as he thought. This leads to something of an existential crisis. Sadly, he has no one to talk to but himself and a mechanical version of Keyser Soze. Things go quietly downhill in a ponderous, Space Odyssey kind of way...

Comments: Moon is difficult to categorise. It's a science fiction film of a sort which isn't often made these days. There are no lasers, space battles or sweeping alien landscapes. It's one guy on the moon going a bit mad. The space setting is as much about giving an excuse to raise questions of individuality and identity as it is to look cool. This is a pleasant change. That said, it all feels very familiar, aping the spartan whiteness of 2001 and feeling reminiscent of a dozen movies where the crew of a space station/ship/colony get hunted down and eaten. Most of these associations are purposefully invoked in order to set up surprises later in the film but it does mean Moon sometimes lacks individuality of its own, overwhelmed by references and in-jokes.

There's some brilliant cinematography but it's not actually that impressive to look at - it's only brilliant when you think about the effort they must have gone to in order to get some of the shots. Trying to remember this while simultaneously avoiding thinking about the daft plot and the questionable science is tricky.

And yet, despite its flaws, Moon is unquestionably engrossing. Sam Rockwell is fantastic throughout and the pacing of fresh revelations is excellent. It feels likes something is always going on, even though very little actually happens. The story itself might not stand up to a second viewing but I'll probably watch it again at some point anyway, just to pick up on the little details and marvel at the clever camera work.

Conclusion: Good but lacking in identity. (Which is rather ironic...)

Explosions: None.
Space battles: None.
Time-travelling killer robots: None.
Exotic, green alien women: None.
Chesney Hawkes songs: One.

Rating: 4/5.

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Labels: film review, sci-fi

 
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  Terminator - Salvation (DVD)

Starring: Christian Bale and Sam Worthington.

Rated: 12.

Story: It's the future... but the future of an alternate past where nuclear war has already happened. Or something like that. Anyway, everywhere is covered with dust and burnt-out cars, and the machines have taken over large chunks of the world. The human resistance is surprisingly well-equipped with submarines, fighters and helicopters, and has a plan to take the fight to Skynet, the computer leading the robots.

Meanwhile, John Connor, the prophesied leader of humanity, struggles to make anyone listen to his stories of time-travelling cyborgs and explanations of how he's older than his own dad. For some reason, no one agrees to put him in charge...

Comments: Right. Let me get this straight: in the original Terminator, a cyborg travelled back in time to stop the victorious leader of the post-Apocalyptic humans from being born. In the process it both brought about his birth and the Apocalypse. In Terminator 2, a couple more temporal tourists cancelled nuclear Armageddon. Only for it to be reinstated in Terminator 3 and bypassed again in The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Then they put the cyborg in charge of California. Or was that before? Possibly. But was it before the original now, the actual now or one of the alternate nows? I'm not sure.

Who am I again?

I dunno. I've lost track of which Terminator timeline is the official one. It doesn't really matter for this new sequel, however. All the time travelling has already finished (even though it's yet to happen), Judgment Day has come and gone, and it's down to a straight fight between humanity and the machines. Cue lots of explosions in the desert.

Paradoxes aside, Salvation has all the established hallmarks of the Terminator series - a friendly cyborg, a robot that won't die, a strong female character (who just happens to be hot), someone saying 'Come with me if you want to live', an endless fight in a factory and lots of stuff blowing up. It's a fun return to a fondly-remembered franchise. That said, the generic wasteland setting and the lack of time travel does make it a little bland in its own right. It's all action and no plot and gets a bit silly by the end, finishing with an almost comically literal take on "it's what's in someone's heart that counts." Bale's performance is totally forgettable. Thankfully, Worthington manages to display enough charisma for the both of them.

Still, if you're in the mood for explosions and killer machines, this is one of the better choices available. (After the first three movies, of course... and the TV series... and The Matrix... and, oh, never mind...)

Conclusion: Booms, guns, robots, planes, bikes and Moon Goodblood. Turn it on and break out the beer.

Explosions: Loads. If it's on the screen, then it's liable to go up in a ball of flame at any moment.
Time travel: None.
Talk about time travel: Lots.
Impossibly tough robots: Dozens.
Will it be back?: Almost certainly. Going on past form, expect more time travel, a female cyborg and a detonation every three seconds.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: film review, sci-fi

 
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  Watchmen (DVD)

Starring: A woolly mask with splodges on it and a man with a very unhealthy blue glow.

Rated: 18.

Story: In an alternate version of the 1980s, a retired superhero is murdered and his old comrades endeavour to track down the killer whilst simultaneously whining about how much they miss the old days.

Comments: I should hate this film. It contains the two things most likely to irritate me in an action movie - angst-ridden superheroes and a narrative that's told in a strange order to make it seem more interesting. Oh, and some excessive gore for the sake of it. Not to mention a plot that promises more than the ending delivers. So it has four things that... No wait, there are some gadgets that might as well be powered by magic in there as well. That makes five things that... Er, did I mention it's half an hour too long? So that's, erm...

Hang on a minute while I go get some red robes and a comfy chair...

...

Right. That's better. As I was saying, Watchmen has any number of elements that are liable to grate. Happily, however, they're all thrown together which such style and spectacle that it doesn't matter. The characters are somehow sympathetic (despite being mostly crazy) and there's nearly always something interesting happening.

The soundtrack is fantastic, the editing is superb and the mix of time-frames and locations keeps the film visually fresh throughout. It may not be the rip-roaring superhero adventure full of smashing and explosions I've been waiting for but it all makes Spider-Man's recent cinematic moping seem doubly tiresome.

Conclusion: Would you believe it? Telling the story in a jumbled order makes superhero angst bearable.

Explosions: Relatively few.
Vicious brawling: Plenty.
Silly sex scenes: Two or three.
Spectacle: Lots.
Stretched Lycra: Slightly less than is entirely seemly.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: action, fantasy, film review, sci-fi

 
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  Planet of the Apes (2001)

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Helena Bonham-Carter and Tim Roth.

Rated: 12.

Story: An astronaut ventures too far into a temporal storm and crash lands on a planet where the apes are in charge and humans are kept as slaves. He attempts to phone home but ends up leading a rebellion instead.

Comments: With the postal strikes disrupting my film rentals, I decided it was time to delve around at the bottom of the hard-drive recorder and rediscover whatever was lurking there...

Along with some repeats of Top Gear, fifty-seven episodes of Pokémon and an inexplicable recording of Hole in the Wall, I found the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes. I've been meaning to watch it for years but never entirely dared. I have fond memories of staying up late to see the original when I was a teenager and being blown away by the ending. The possibility of a new version being as good seemed remote. Nonetheless, devoid of other entertainment which I hadn't seen before and which didn't involve celebrities attempting to squeeze themselves through narrow gaps, I faced my fear and settled down to watch Helena Bonham-Carter in a chimpanzee suit...

I should probably have watched Top Gear again.

Although Planet of the Apes (2001) has its moments, it's generally a clunky mess. The first half is rather slow going in places with apes frequently arguing over the treatment of humans. This is thinly-veiled commentary on civil and animal rights in our own society but the two get a little mixed and the whole thing comes across as both moralising and shallow. (It also ignores the fact that the various different species of ape live and work together quite happily without batting an eyelid.) The pace picks up in the latter stages but it all inevitably leads to a big CGI battle and a final showdown between psycho ape (Roth) and hero human (Wahlberg).

The make-up and costumes are great, at least, and the actors do a good job of mimicking simian movements. Some dubious wire-work breaks the spell, however, as does the appearance of an actual chimpanzee - the men in costumes suddenly look like just that.

Mark Wahlberg is never convincing. To be fair, the plot and script don't help him out but he fails to convey the trauma of finding himself in such an upside-down world. The rest of the cast do OK, though.

There are a few references to the original but these are amongst the low points of the movie. Charlton Heston's cameo verges on farce and the sets in the ape city look like they've been lifted from 1960s Star Trek. Special mention has to go to the ending, which is beyond stupid. Clearly the makers wanted to come up with something to bring shock and surprise in a similar manner to the earlier version. It's certainly surprising but, unfortunately, there is no way for it to convincingly make sense. You'll remember it but for all the wrong reasons. I kind of wish I'd dozed off before reaching it and dreamt of Jeremy Clarkson in a silver jumpsuit being shoved into a swimming pool by an oncoming barrier of polystyrene.

Conclusion: You could probably make a more entertaining remake with the kids' cuddly toys and an Action Man. Planet of the Teletubbies, now there's an idea...

Explosions: A couple (and a few burning tents).
Apes: Loads.
Holes in the plot: Big enough to fit a considerable number of celebrities through.
Better than the original?: Not a chance.
Better than repeats of Top Gear?: Not really.
Better than watching a comedian, a rugby player and a weather girl get knocked into a swimming pool by a perforated wall?: Probably not...

Rating: 2/5.

Labels: film review, sci-fi

 
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  Knowing (DVD)

Starring: Nicolas Cage & Rose Byrne.

Rated: 15.

Story: An astrophysics professor, who is struggling with the randomness of the universe after the death of his wife, stumbles upon predictions of impending disasters. In trying to figure out what's going on and how it can all possibly be true, he finds purpose, a love interest and some big explosions...

Comments: Knowing is a strange mix of genres: one moment it's a science fiction extravaganza, the next it's a thriller and sometimes it's a ghost story. Unfortunately, although it flits between these subplots with style and ease, it's never very good at following all three at once. Each strand is tense and intriguing but the way they tie together at the end is very unsatisfying. The premise of a mysterious list of numbers warning of catastrophe is great but it ultimately turns out to be a very elaborate scheme to solve a simple problem. Like a mousetrap involving cuckoo clocks, marble runs and toy yachts, it's entertaining to watch but doesn't necessarily seem that useful.

The film feels as if it's trying to say something about the nature of belief and hope but the bizarre conclusion confuses it all. The professor's personal path to faith is providentially laid out before him, showing him exactly what he needs to see, but as with many Damascus road experiences in real life, it's perhaps not very convincing for anyone else.

Still, the acting is passable and the plot is gripping for most of the film's length. It just doesn't make much sense. The end result is both riveting and underwhelming at the same time.

Conclusion: A scenic route to a mundane destination.

Explosions: Occasional but enormous.
Weird blokes who lurk in the woods: Several.
Spooky stones: Thousands.
Scenes involving frantic paint-stripping: One.
Captured mice: None.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: film review, sci-fi

 
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  Doomsday (DVD)

Starring: Rhona Mitra. Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell show up on occasion. Everyone else is cannon fodder.

Rated: 18. (Expect blood, squishiness, graphic cannibalism and exploding rabbits.)

Story: An outbreak of a lethal (and messy) virus in Glasgow causes the whole of Scotland to be quarantined. The English throw up a great big wall and leave everyone north of it to their fate.

Thirty years later, the virus reappears in London. Desperate to obtain a cure, the Prime Minister sends a military team over the border to investigate reports of survivors.

Unfortunately, it transpires that half these survivors have had nothing to do for decades but watch DVDs of Mad Max and Escape from New York. The other half have been making armour and working on their jousting skills.

The expedition runs into trouble pretty much instantly...

Comments: The world will end in New York. Fact. I've seen it on screen so many times, it must be true. Whether it involves zombies, plague, meteor showers, giant lizards, nuclear weapons, talking chimps, unexplained giant bat monsters or thirty feet of snow, New York is going to get it first. This being the case, I'm expecting to have a certain amount of warning before the apocalypse arrives. With a B&Q round the corner, I should have plenty of time to nip out and stock up on batteries, torches and chainsaws (not to mention some soothing magnolia paint to decorate my panic room).

Or that's what I thought. After seeing Doomsday, I'm not so sure. If civilisation ends in Glasgow, I might not even have opportunity to sprinkle the driveway with bear traps before the lizard and zombies arrive and start fighting on it...

Ho well. Apart from raising the disconcerting possibility of disaster striking just down the motorway, Doomsday is rather good. It's essentially a homage to any number of stunt-heavy adventure flicks from the Eighties, combined with an extra touch of polish and quite a lot more gore than I remember. As such, its plot is wafer thin but it never takes itself seriously enough for that to matter. It's all a slick excuse for a rollercoaster of shoot-outs, car combat and sword fighting. Despite these sequences being over the top, they're not reliant on wires or copious CGI, resulting in a pleasingly solid feel.

Characterisation is limited but the cast does an excellent job with what they're given. It really is refreshing to see a fully-fledged action film full of Brits and with a British setting. Watching a chase through Glasgow Queen St station, complete with signs in Gaelic, makes a welcome change from the New York subway. (Although the layout is all wrong. The real Queen St is tiny - they'd have run out of platform halfway through.)

Don't expect genius, mind you - merely dumb spectacle and plenty of fond memories of other films. I was beginning to wonder whether they made them like this anymore...

Conclusion: It's like a greatest hits compilation of action movies from the Thatcher era (with added Glaswegians). All that's missing are some aliens and a Terminator.

Vehicles that explode on impact: Several.
Cows: Hundreds.
Nefarious politicians: Two.
Kilt-wearing Can-Can dancers: Too many.
Violent uses of a pheasant: One.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: action, film review, sci-fi

 
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  Star Trek (2009)

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and a whole lot of other talented people.

Rated: 12A. There isn't much tension and there are only a few 'scary' bits, so children who are a little younger could probably cope. Everything moves so fast, though, they'll spend the whole time asking you what's going on.

Story: Someone remembers that, once upon a time, Star Trek was fresh and exciting. They try to recapture that by going back to the original crew and adding lots of special effects, action, humour, slick editing and energy.

Everyone else remembers the Star Wars prequels and the new Indiana Jones and feels slightly nervous...

Comments: I used to enjoy Star Trek. I remember avidly watching re-runs of the original series as a kid and then again as a teenager. Some of the films were great. The announcement of The Next Generation was big news.

When TNG arrived, however, it all felt rather bland. I never liked any of the characters much and the Enterprise always looked as if it had been recently hoovered. The spin-offs weren't anywhere near as interesting as Babylon 5 and the movies became less essential with every passing Roman numeral. The franchise slowly sank to a point where I didn't care anymore.

The announcement of a new film set in the early days of Kirk and Spock only managed to raise a small sigh of despair. There were so many ways the project could go wrong, it wasn't even worth thinking about...

Bearing all this in mind, quite how the movie turned out to be so unbelievably fantastic is something of a mystery. I suspect Voodoo.

From the opening moments, everything thunders along with pace and spectacle. Somehow the movie manages to trade on every fond memory of the Kirk era while wiping away recollections of countless tiresome TNG 'human interest' episodes. It's a cracking sci-fi adventure full of recognisable characters that are at once comfortably familiar and pleasantly unpredictable.

The casting is a work of genius. All the main characters are portrayed in a manner that's true to the original but the prequel setting means their roles and relationships aren't fully formed, allowing plenty of room for development. Zachary Quinto is superb as Spock and Chris Pine captures the cavalier attitude of Kirk in the days before he needed a corset.

There are plenty of references to the original TV series but a deep knowledge of Trek lore isn't required to appreciate them (although anyone who has never heard of Captain Kirk before might struggle to keep up in places). The only real issue with the film is the slightly ropey plot which almost falls apart two-thirds of the way through thanks to ten minutes which combine stupendous coincidence, dodgy physics and the magical use of a transporter, stretching plausibility further than even the lightning pace can entirely paper over.

Then again, maybe that's just another homage to the source material...

If you've ever enjoyed Star Trek, go and see this.

Conclusion: I didn't actually applaud when the film ended but if someone else had started, I'd have totally joined in...

Explosions: Lots.
Nostalgia: Plenty.
Memorable moments and lines: Loads.
Dubious Scottish accents: None. (Surprisingly.)
People who won't like this movie: Big fans of Patrick Stewart, dubious beards, Holodecks and freshly vacuumed carpet.

Rating: 5/5.

Labels: film review, sci-fi

 
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  Paycheck (DVD)

Starring: Ben Affleck, Aaron Eckhart and Uma Thurman.

Rated: 12.

Story: Michael Jennings (Affleck) is an electronics genius who secretly reverse engineers technology for big corporations. They lock him in a lab for months, he steals their competitors ideas and then they wipe his memory so no one finds out. In return, he gets a huge paycheck.

He decides to take one final job, only to wake up oblivious to the last three years and with nothing to show for it but an envelope of twenty everyday objects he can't remember why he mailed to himself. Then people start trying to kill him. It's like the office Christmas party worst-case scenario.

Mysteriously, the objects turn out to be exactly what he needs to MacGyver his way towards some answers as to what is going on...

Comments: Fed up with movies which start at the end and work backwards to hide the predictable nature of the events? Here's a film where they clearly wrote it backwards and then decided to show everything forwards.

Confused?

Well, to reveal anything more would be to give the game away but the plot of Paycheck is essentially a convenient excuse to make a frantic sequence of improbable escapes seem plausible. For once, surviving one-in-a-million scrapes is a feature and not a reason for scorn. The result is fast-paced and exciting. Ultimately, however, it's all perhaps a little too neat and relies too heavily on its central premise - characterisation is non-existent, there's no real backdrop to the story and everything depends on not just one, but two, unlikely technologies. Don't think about it very hard, though, and Paycheck is rather entertaining. (Maybe even because it skips over so many details.)

With plenty of running about and not much contemplation, Ben Affleck isn't stretched (luckily). The rest of the cast have to make do with characters pulled straight from other movies. There's the evil corporate guy, the efficient henchman, the scientist love interest, the comic sidekick - pretty much everyone you'd expect really apart from the ageing mentor only a few days away from retirement.

Conclusion: A great idea executed merely competently. A little more care (and a different cast) could have made it superb.

Explosions: A couple of big ones.
Ben Affleck running away: Lots.
Uma Thurman looking attractive: Surprisingly little.
Technical plausibility: On a par with cold fusion.
Entirely new uses for a paperclip: One.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: film review, sci-fi, thriller

 
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  Death Race (Blu-ray)

Starring: Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson and, oh my goodness, is that Ian McShane!? (Remember Lovejoy?)

Rated: 18. (Apparently it's only a 15 on DVD, although I have to assume it's still a bloody tale of revenge, featuring convicts murdering each other using killer cars. Perhaps there's less gore or they bleep out all the swearing. Who knows?)

Story: In the near future, a former racing driver gets framed for murder and just happens to end up in a privately run prison which supplements its income by broadcasting gladiatorial races between the inmates on pay-per-view. Winning five races means freedom.

To add some spice, the cars have guns and the co-drivers are busty prisoners from the women's penitentiary down the road...

Comments: Right, before I go any further, I should probably point out that Death Race really is as daft as it sounds and is dumber than a toddler with a nappy full of hammers. People blow each other up while driving very fast. That's about it. This movie makes The Condemned look like a thoughtful reflection on the morality of violence as entertainment.

Death Race is gory, predictable and totally unbelievable. That said, if you're looking to watch some mindless explosions while collapsed on the sofa with a beer, it's slick and has impressive effects. The racing has obviously been influenced by a number of computer games, so this is maybe one to try after a hard day with the kids when you fancy a shot of Burnout but holding a controller feels a little too much like effort.

The cast do fine with what they're given but Jason Statham needs to consider his projects more carefully. Could he really not find better vehicles for his talents than this and In the Name of the King? Also, I spent the whole time expecting McShane to offer him some dodgy paintings (which was somewhat off-putting).

Conclusion: It's people driving at high speed while shooting at each other - nothing more nor less.

Explosions: Lots.
Cars with guns: Several.
Startling plot twists: None.
Gritty concrete locations: Constant.
Dodgy East Anglian antique dealers: One.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: action, film review, sci-fi

 
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  Starship Troopers 3 - Marauder (DVD)

Starring: Casper Van Dien.

Rated: 15.

Story: Humanity is under threat from alien bugs and war rages across the galaxy. Back home, the totalitarian regime manipulates the situation for its own ends.

Johnny Rico returns from the first film to shoot giant bugs and flirt with cute, girlie troopers... again.

Comments: Space ships, big guns, beautiful people and large bugs exploding in a splatter of slime - the Starship Troopers films are dumb fun. As an unexpected extra, there's also a little lesson on the dangers of Fascism and media manipulation.

The first film deals with demonisation of enemies, the second with the idolisation of heroes and this third one covers the appropriation of religion for political purposes. It's not deep but considering we're talking about an action flick with explosions, gratuitous nudity and giant bugs, it's impressive. Although it's unclear whether the conclusions are ambiguous by design or through fuzzy reasoning, there's more to think about than in many projects with vastly higher budgets.

Conclusion: Cheap, silly and surprisingly entertaining.

Explosions: Plenty.
Big bugs: Hordes.
Huge bugs: A few.
Absolutely astoundingly enormous bugs and slimy, psychic, pop-singing, human military commanders: One of each.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: action, film review, film review (vol.6), quick, sci-fi

 
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  Babylon A.D. (DVD)

Starring: Vin Diesel & Michelle Yeoh.

Rated: 12.

Story: In the not-so-distant future, a gruff mercenary (Diesel) must escort a mysterious young woman and her mentor (Yeoh) from a Mongolian convent to America. Along the way, they get involved in plenty of random violence, some dubious genetic manipulation and the cynical machinations of a New Age cult.

Just to make sure we know it's the future, showers talk to them.

Comments: Sometimes, despite being bad, a film can display something of its original potential. It's possible to see what the makers might have achieved if only they hadn't messed up. Perhaps with more money or stronger performances, a tighter script, better pacing or a touch of divine intervention, the project might have worked out.

Then there are movies like Babylon A.D. which are such a mess you wonder if you're unwittingly watching a reel of deleted scenes rather than the film itself.

What was everyone involved thinking? The script is incoherent and the dialogue ranges from uninteresting to nonsensical. Bizarre locations and dull action sequences are inserted for the sake of it. The plot and characters take so long to develop, it's hard to care about them. In fact, after an hour and a quarter, I was desperate to fast-forward the film to the end. On checking, however, I discovered I was only ten minutes from the credits anyway. I was relieved but also hugely confused since the movie seemed barely half way through...

Babylon A.D. feels like science fiction put together by people whose only experience of the genre is Escape from New York, Highlander: The Source and a few snatches of Blade Runner. ('Look! Talking showers, lots of guns, neon advertising and really, really big TVs - it's the future! Let's add some thugs on motorbikes...') There's no depth or point to it, merely some cool gadgets. It's a shambles.

Conclusion: Not quite as engaging as the episode of Basil Brush my kids are currently watching as they eat their tea.

Explosions: Some.
Unexpected location changes: Several.
The accidental cage match: Implausible.
Kung Fu nuns: One.
The best bit?: The end arriving an hour ahead of schedule.

Rating: 1/5.

Labels: film review (vol.6), sci-fi

 
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  Resident Evil - Degeneration (DVD)

Starring: Some voice actors who no doubt wish to remain nameless... and an umbrella.

Rated: 15.

Story: Terrorists have released the T-virus in an airport and there's a danger the G-virus may be let loose as well. Leon S Kennedy and Claire Redfield must renew their Raccoon City partnership, shoot some zombies in the head and then have a never-ending boss battle with a mutated monster that just won't die.

So, yeah, imagine a new Resident Evil game with no actual game, only the cutscenes.

Scary, eh?

(And not in a good way...)

Comments: Capcom have milked the Resident Evil franchise hard since the release of the first game in 1996. After almost twenty different games, three live-action films and a stack of merchandising, here's a computer-animated movie picking up the plot a while after Resident Evil 4. That's the game, not the film, by the way, since the storylines in the two media have diverged. But, then again, if you didn't know that already you should probably move along now because Degeneration is hard enough to follow even with a hazy memory of having played half a dozen of the games.

In particular, if Resident Evil 2 passed you by, you're not going to get much out of this.

Sadly, however, knowing your Umbrella from your T-virus still doesn't make Degeneration much fun. The first twenty minutes show some promise: decent visuals, a vaguely intriguing setup, familiar characters and zombies. There's a possibility it might all rumble along nicely. Then Leon turns up and everything goes pear shaped. Nothing makes sense, the middle section is dull and the final third is an excess of daft mayhem allowed to run wild without the budget restraints of live-action.

Some of the dialogue is so bad it's almost good but most of it is just plain bad. The voice acting is frequently wooden and occasionally the pauses between lines are too long, as if the recordings haven't been edited together properly. It speaks volumes about the quality of the script that Leon has to spend a couple of minutes at the end of the film explaining what was going on and the motivations of the other characters.

We've grown used to this level of ineptness in games because the cutscenes are dictated by the confines of the unlikely gameplay (which in Resident Evil consists of searching spooky mansions for weird keys while shooting zombies and solving obscure logic puzzles). As long as the games are fun to play, it doesn't matter if the story is ropey - the clunky dialogue adds to the B-movie atmosphere. Take out the game, however, and all that's left is a B-movie.

Conclusion: Plan Zombie from Outer Space.

Explosions: Plenty.
Brooding loners, cute little girls who need rescued, dodgy senators, unstoppable monsters, underground facilities and scientists who talk too slowly: One of each.
Ridiculous feats of acrobatics: Several.
Impressive CGI: Lots.
Good writing: None.

Rating: 2/5 if you've enjoyed the games, else 1/5.

Labels: action (vol.4), film review (vol.6), horror, sci-fi

 
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  Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Season 1 (DVD)

Starring: Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker & Summer Glau.

Rated: 15.

Story: Forget Terminator 3 ever happened. A few years after Terminator 2, Sarah Connor (Headey) and her teenage son, John (Dekker), take a jump through time to the present day. They're fugitives from the law and hunted by murderous cyborgs from the future who are intent on killing John before he grows up to lead resistance against Skynet - the computer system still destined to obliterate humanity with nuclear weapons.

Aided by Cameron, a re-programmed cyborg (Glau), Sarah and John attempt to prevent Skynet being created. This tends to involve moral dilemmas and explosives...

Comments: You're not going to get far with this if you haven't seen the first couple of Terminator movies. That said, if you haven't seen the first couple of Terminator movies, why not? Cyborgs, big fights, time travel and Linda Hamilton - the only thing missing is ninjas. Go watch them now.

The TV series is obviously working on a smaller budget, so involves fewer big fights and more tense situations and sneaking about. Thanks to some excellent editing and pacing this works well. Some of the attempts at lightening the mood aren't so great, though, with too many of the jokes centred around cyborgs not understanding human idioms and behaviour.

It would have been easy for The Sarah Connor Chronicles to follow a 'Terminator of the Week' formula but, thankfully, this is avoided. Each episode concentrates on a new lead in stopping Skynet, with the hunt for Sarah and John forming a backdrop to the whole series. The episodes are more self-contained than in Heroes but not as much as in Battlestar Galactica. Unfortunately, this is sometimes unsatisfying, providing neither closure nor much overall plot advancement. Despite there only being nine episodes, they quickly blend together. There aren't any duffers but, then again, none really stand out.

All in all, this first season is definitely worth watching if you enjoyed the films. Whether there's enough going on for the show to maintain momentum through a full second season is another question.

Oh, and Lena Headey with an American accent is just wrong.

Conclusion: Good but is it going anywhere?

Explosions: Regular.
Tension: High.
Slightly clunky humour: Occasional.
Psycho cyborgs who just won't die: Frequent.
Ninjas: Not enough.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: action (vol.4), film review (vol.6), sci-fi, thriller

 
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  Iron Man (DVD)

Starring: Robert Downey Jr & Gwyneth Paltrow.

Rated: 12.

Story: Wise-cracking playboy and electronics genius, Tony Stark, is captured by a local warlord in Afghanistan while doing a demo of his company's latest missile technology. The warlord demands Stark makes him some of the missiles. Instead, Stark escapes by making a rocket-powered exo-skeleton out of a couple of bazookas and a tin can.

Irritated that his company's weapons are falling into the wrong hands, Stark builds a better suit to become a superhero and put things right.

Meanwhile, the original suit falls into the wrong hands...

Comments: Finally someone's heard my constant moaning about angst-ridden superheroes who spend all their time complaining and/or doing their laundry. Stark is arrogant, funny and the life of the party. Being played by Robert Downey Jr, he's also charming with it and entertaining to watch (unlike Hayden Christensen in Jumper). At last, a superhero who actually quite enjoys it and gets on with smashing things.

I've still got a couple of gripes, though:

1. Why does the first superhero film in a franchise always have to deal with how the hero became super? I really don't care. It's not like it ever makes sense anyway. Is it really possible to build advanced servo-systems in a cave in Afghanistan using a hammer and anvil while recovering from a major injury? I don't think so.

It would be much better if the whole issue was dealt with in a couple of flashbacks somewhere in the middle and the plot simply went straight for explosions and smashing. That worked well enough for Batman.

2. Superheroes fighting their evil alter-ego isn't very interesting. Lately, we've had Hulk vs Abomination, Spider-Man vs Venom and Iron Man vs ... er... Other Iron Man. Unsurprisingly, these battles between combatants with similar powers tend towards stalemate until the hero gets clever or desperate. They're never as much fun as fights between characters with diverse abilities.

Not to mention that the concept of equally matched adversaries was pretty much fully exploited in Superman 2 twenty years ago.

Still, Downey Jr is great and at least this is trying something different from yet another re-run of Spider-Man.

Conclusion: Not bad but it would have been even better if they'd just skipped this one and started with a sequel.

Explosions: Big and everywhere.
Quips: Frequent.
Unlikely science: Prevalent.
Totally implausible feats of engineering: Almost constant.
Angst: Thankfully absent.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: fantasy, film review (vol.6), sci-fi

 
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  Alien vs Predator 2 - Requiem (DVD)

Starring: A Predator, a whole stack of Aliens and various beautiful people waiting around to be lunch.

Rated: 15.

Story: A Predator spaceship crashes on Earth and some Alien specimens escape near a small American town. Another Predator arrives to clean up the mess and keep it all secret. Lots of people get minced.

Comments: Aliens and Predators fighting each other should be the best thing ever.

It's not. It's mainly dark and confusing and not very involving.

The antics of the humans trying to get out the way are more interesting but are relatively indistinguishable from the antics of the humans trying to get out of the way of vampires, zombies and giant lizards in a score of other films... apart from the bit in the maternity ward - that's probably worth skipping if you've got a new arrival due any time soon...

Conclusion: A film you've seen a dozen times before but with the addition of everyone's two favourite psychotic extra-terrestrial species. Could be worse. (Have you seen Alien Resurrection, for instance?)

Explosions: Lots.
Pregnant women: Several.
Housedads: One.
Scenes in which the housedad doesn't get eaten: Two.
Life lesson: If you're going to stand next to a window and say to a child, "Look! See! No monsters," remember to at least glance out the window first.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: action (vol.4), film review (vol.5), horror, quick, sci-fi

 
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  Pixar's WALL-E

Starring: Pixar's usual fantastic animation and artwork... and very few words.

Rated: U.

Story: The Earth has been made uninhabitable thanks to a build up of toxic rubbish and humanity has headed to the stars. After centuries, only one of the robots left behind to clear up remains operational - WALL-E. He has a pet cockroach and longs for love (not with the cockroach, I hasten to add).

Then, one day, a probe arrives from space containing the robot of his dreams...

Comments: You have to give Pixar credit for pushing boundaries. While other studios have been playing catch-up with the quality of their animation and scripts, Pixar have moved on to making movies with feeling and depth and meaning. There are no overweight pandas falling down stairs in comic fashion here. The first half hour has almost no verbal dialogue. Pathos is created through emotive movement, sweeping vistas and archetypal imagery. Great effort is extended in making us care for an abandoned robot on a desolate world and to empathise with his faltering attempts to find companionship. It...

Oh, goodness, I was bored. You know, like that bit halfway through Cars where the pace turns to treacle and you just want something (anything!) to happen. After twenty minutes of WALL-E I was seriously worried whether I could last another hour or so of a lonely robot wandering brown landscapes.

Fortunately, the film picks up. WALL-E and his girlfriend reach an interstellar cruise-liner full of obese people and chaos ensues. Everyone falls over a lot. Stuff happens.

It's pretty predictable stuff, though, and there's still not much dialogue. There are a couple of messages - one ecological and another about avoiding dependency on technology - but they're so incredibly broad and obvious that the lesson which actually sticks in the mind is to not become so fat that you can't roll over.

All this puts rather a lot of pressure on the slender and unlikely plot. The story centres around a small plant that WALL-E finds on Earth. It's the first sign that the planet is habitable again.

One plant.

Exactly how toxic would things have to get for every weed on Earth to die? My back yard is entirely slabbed over and gets occasionally sprayed with herbicide - nevertheless, it's got all manner of flora sprouting from it. If I leave it the entire summer, I have to cut a path through with a machete and keep an eye out for overweight pandas.

Fighting over a single plant feels very contrived.

There are several further believability issues but it would be picky to mention them. Any other animated film could get away with these things. Maybe I was put in an unreceptive mood by the unexpectedly slow start. Perhaps, though, in making a world that looks real, Pixar made me expect more realism in the events.

The rest of my family certainly enjoyed the film much more than I did. The boys couldn't decide whether they liked this or Prince Caspian best. Personally, my favourite bit was the short film which came on first called Presto which involves a magician having a slapstick altercation with his hungry rabbit. It was crammed with more action and ideas than the feature.

Conclusion: If the kids want to watch this every day for a month when it comes out on DVD, at least the lack of speech will make it easy for me to ignore.

Explosions: Occasional and small.
Dialogue: Occasional and brief.
Artistic moments: Frequent and slightly too long.
Overweight pandas falling down the stairs: None.
Overweight humans rolling down a hill: Not enough...

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: comedy, family, film review (vol.5), sci-fi

 
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  Spider-Man 3 (DVD)

Starring: Tobey Maguire & Kirsten Dunst.

Rated: 12.

Story: Peter Parker tries to balance the adoration he receives as Spider-Man with various crises in his day-to-day existence. He's broke, his job's at risk, his best friend hates him and he's pushing his girlfriend away. In the middle of it all, he has to deal with a supervillain bitten by some radioactive sand, wrestle his own costume (which has been taken over by an alien) and survive a nasty outbreak of romantic comedy...

Comments: I saw a trailer for Superhero Movie the other day. Its attempt to parody the superhero genre seemed to mainly involve taking the original Spider-Man film and adding lots of extra falling over. On first sight, this seemed a little lame, considering the number of overblown superhero films we've had in recent years. Maybe, though, it's a dig at the fact that Spider-Man is the template from which the others have been created. Batman started the whole miserable, conflicted superhero thing but that has plenty of gadgets, action and Jack Nicholson. It's Spider-Man that made the angst as central as the action and then upped the spectacle with vast amounts of computer-generated mayhem to compensate for the tedium. This has infected everything from Hulk to The Fantastic Four. Even the new Superman and Batman have angst. Take the mick out of Spider-Man and you take the mick out of them all.

I want to sit the makers of superhero movies down and force them to watch a dozen episodes of Ben 10. It's a cartoon about Ben Tennyson, a ten-year-old boy who discovers a watch that can turn him into various superpowered aliens, allowing him to save the world. The episodes are full of explosions and adventure but, because Ben is ten, he doesn't have angst - when he's not fighting villains he uses his powers to play pranks on his cousin. He actually likes being a superhero. It's refreshing.

Interestingly, the live-action Ben 10: Race against Time movie features Ben returning home from his summer-long villain fighting vacation. He has to deal with fitting back into school, concealing his powers and not being popular. He even has to come up with an act for the school variety show. In short, he gets lumbered with a whole load of angst. In compensation for this tedium, there's some very impressive computer-generated mayhem.

Argh!

It's all just too upsetting...

Predictably, Spider-Man 3 doesn't mess with the formula and continues where the other two left off. Yep, excellent computer-animated action sequences are padded out with a little romance, a touch of slapstick and a large amount of angst as Peter Parker tries to work out who he is as his 9 to 5 life goes down the tubes. (Again.)

The script is somehow both stuffed full of plot and quite plodding. This results in lots going on but poor character development. Half an hour of cringe-worthy comedy and heart-to-heart conversations could be lost without making the motivations of most of the characters seem any less plausible than they already are.

All in all, Spider-Man 3 will do. The cast manage OK with what they're given and the action (particularly with Sandman) is great but this is getting tired. If there's going to be another Spider-Man movie, it really needs to take itself less seriously, spread out the action and cut down on the soul-searching. I've said it before and I'll no doubt have to say it again:

Less angst, more smashing.

Thank you.

Conclusion: A bit more falling over and the franchise would be a parody of itself.

Explosions: Some.
Wise-cracking: Almost none.
Swinging from roof tops: Not enough.
Main characters being slapped about for stupidity: Definitely not enough.
Villains: A small puddle of tar, big pile of sand and a large dose of self-absorbed idiocy.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: action (vol.3), fantasy, film review (vol.4), sci-fi, sci-fi (vol.1)

 
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  Reign of Fire (DVD)

Starring: Christian Bale (Batman Begins), Matthew McConaughey, Izabella Scorupco (Who was in GoldenEye apparently. Oh yeah, coming back to me now...)

Rated: 12

Story: It is twenty years in the future and the world has been turned to ash by dragons. Quinn (Bale) leads a community of survivors who have holed up in a ruined castle in Northumberland, trying to eke out an existence while avoiding being snacked on by marauding flying lizards. It seems all is lost. Then a bunch of American soldiers turn up with a stash of nylons and chocolate, and an unlikely plan for victory.

Comments: I seem to remember the posters for this movie showing dragons swooping over the flaming ruins of the Houses of Parliament. I imagined a desperate fight through the skies and streets of the capital, landmarks exploding left and right - kind of like Godzilla but in London AND WITH DRAGONS! How excellent... But, no. That bit, where the dragons take over, is told via a quick flick through the magazine clippings in Quinn's scrapbook. Drat.

For a few minutes it looks like we're going to get an interesting take on the post-Apocalypse movie. Normally we get something set immediately after the disaster (28 Days Later) or so far in the future that everyone's forgotten what happened (Waterworld). Twenty years is long enough for a new society, a new mythology even, to have arisen but short enough for everything to remain rooted in actual memories of our world. These people live a medieval life but re-enact Star Wars for the children. Forget the dragons, let's pretend it was a nuclear war and try to draw some truths about humanity from the aftermath - that would be a great movie... But, again, no. Dragons start turning up and we get a middle-of-the-road action movie. Set mostly in a quarry. Drat.

"But at least it has dragons," I hear you cry and, yes, it has dragons but... but... I'm sorry, dragons don't exist. For some reason my brain can cope with computer generated images of aliens and mummies, vampires and ghosts but show me a dragon chasing a helicopter and it's like someone is trying to sell me a Rolex for a tenner. We're told from such an early age that dragons aren't real, it's very hard to forget. This movie requires more than the suspension of disbelief; it requires the suspension of most higher brain function. Still, as long as there's plenty of tense, close-quarters battling with dragons... Er, yet again, no. The dragons fly fast and spew vast amounts of napalm-death everywhere. The humans run away and hide in holes (usually in the script). Drat.

That's not to say the movie isn't fun, it could just be so much more. It's only in the last half an hour that it settles on its direction and we finally get some proper dragon-slaying thrills. Is that enough to save it...? Thankfully, yes. Hurrah!

Conclusion: There are lots of good ideas here but few are followed through. Bale and McConaughey do well with what they're given, however, and keep things moving along. It's definitely watchable but the real fun is in thinking up all the better dragon movies they almost made.

Explosions: None.
Dragons: Some.
Napalm: Lots.
Opportunities missed: Countless.

Rating: 3/5

Labels: film review (vol.1), sci-fi, sci-fi (vol.1)

 
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